Trúc Anh
STAY UP WITH NATURE
Hoarfrost strings across the cliff make things go numb
Tingling spring valley awaits your footstep
Patrol among immense on-going season
Hat off to salute the ceremonial soldier of Northern pass
Leaves waving across the pass
We march and sing
Make the ground warm for every patrol step
Sky scatters light in love for clouds
Fountain loves the mossy green watershed
Walking by empty path
Hasten slope…
Then pass…
Afternoon is thin of pan-pipe sound
Mother stirs up fire
Child swoops into warmth
Father gives spice
Child drinks up fermented words
For lives, the ancestors have seized the rock
Without border, without home land we become mendicant
The intellectual philosophy of mountains and forests is simple as that
…..
Sound of junglefowl
Urge the foot to be tiredless
Gun tip rises to the sky’s summit
Sweats on the silent green shirt
Corn and rice blossom
Mother land is bright brown
The sun is out of reach
Blurry blue dew floats along faded mountain shadow
Patrols along the vast fumigated season
This spring step carves on spring
Rocky slope of thousand turns, thousand peaks
Could not stop the leg stepping on floating clouds
Though the cold icy rain is intense
Under tempest, the naked chest is ready
The soldier just as that forest tree
Firm root and fresh branch overcome harshness
Badge…
Drink mountain’s breath to green
Dyed with forest sap to vivid
…..
Empty post hanged in whirlwind
Night by night, thought the mountain shakes
In the Two thousand summit the kitchen’s fire head isn’t warm
Miss the freezing sweet Northern wind
Miss the bitter smeech Laos wind
Miss the off-shore wind that soaked of saltiness
Miss the forest path where comrades stick together
January, a grouchy old man
sew the sky with dry branches
Next to me in a cold watch
Cunninghamia cheers
Carves in the sky the proud eagle wings
Pride along four lonely seasons
…..
Somebody has always thought that the border is only green forest
Not knowing an outpost of burning sunshine
Hillful of balm-cricket shaked of sound
A sharp pain inside longing for those back home
Desolated tree left the woods in a hurry
Patrol road disentangles condensed sunshine under hoofbeat
Eases the burning thirst
A water drop shared in a day of getting lost in the forest
We…
Young men that keep the land tonight
Keep the children’s eyes always pure as the sky above the border
Keep the elders’s wise about the root
Protect every single page of the thousand-live epics
And…
Even the moment that has never been told
In the border’s afternoon seeing those who seems familiar yet so strange
Monstrous sunshine draws bands of pink cloud
A platoon whose chest stained with flag’s color
A line of cunninghamia waves across the pass
Solemnly sallutes the milestone
Then flies up, flies up
…..
Border’s road doesn’t count days and months
But counts the color of time on the milestone
What divine is the moment we salute Homeland
Watching mountain shape, river streak defines border of a thousand lives
Recognize traces of fox and civet through smell of dew and cloud
Can tell from a tuft grass whether human footprint or animal’s
Touch a mark left on the milestone
Feels hurt!
Border’s road doesn’t tell story of now and then
But tells the story of everytime the forest shooks
The howl resounds through forest slope, fountain’s deep
Call the entire village to unite under the tall house
Comfort words bring freshwater to the field
Convert the lost, reveal the devil
Happy gong to the wind!
Border’s road doesn’t count slope or pass
But counts the white taciturn hamlet in the valley of afar
Counts the slow-burn, warm love of human being
Counts the seed of trust and love in the cold wild of every man’s concern
Of all the classes that been through, of all the house that been made
Of all the rice field that entering harvest season
Unremitting spring dyes the colorful cabbage field
Fresh windy wind blows in hill of the white vernicia montana
Golden bell season roosts on corn husk
A bell for each of children’s school day
Let the blue of rock’s eye rustle
…..
Here, there found a love
In mount’s shape, river’s form
In house after house, roof after roof
In the halo of sun that day by day urges the chicken to crow
In the red-color road that sweeps through eternity
You have to be salt in order to marinade people’s heart
Mother’s word lightens up the forest road
I tried to be a hamlet’s boy so as to see through hamlet’s heart
Tried to be a village’s boy so as to see through village’s heart
Green badge dirted with the hill’s red soil
The fever throws emaciation across the face
Through a hanged strip of dress that forest’s po be understood [1]
Accustomed to mountain’s soul through a tied bunch of leaves
Through traces of leaf on the path there know dangerous threat awaits
Through flying path of bees there came the acknowledgement of shame resilience
Wade in the middle of flowing stream to acknowledge what diligence is
Seeing the mothers who’s for life the forehead strained of lủ cờ, acknowledging the word “content” [2]
Take the village’s heart that wide as the old-growth forest
Endorse hamlet’s heart that truthful as a straw roof
Generousity is our village’s corn
Tear a handful of sour pig’s ear rolls longing the leguminous scaffold
Pick a bunch of amla longing the fruit of baccaurea
I miss the way father fixes roof tile as seeing the tilted tall house
Longing for the rice dried by mother as seeing the sleepy sun
Touch the stunning chrysanths color
Red-whiskered bulbul noisily calls summer
Has the sun golden straw, lotus blossomed?
…..
A hundred-domain country arouses
Which arousal can be as of tonight’s words of entrust
Bee’s flying path is flower path honey path
Carve on space so real a concept
Which road is resiliently sweet as border’s heart
Nursing in memory the river station of childhood
to love more ferocious waterfalls
A running layered of rock, an underground ravine urge us to hold tight the gun…
Protect the aquifer to construct nature
A beloved hamlet’s name making us strong
Build mountain’s deep trenches, setting up people’s heart battleground
An i-t class of throbbing sound of the olds and youngs[3]
Name another new lecture
A flap of cress, a bunch of
The youth thirst for devotion
Empty post of thousand stars where our heart warmth of earth
Nostalgic young chest touches the smell of Home land
Far border land, don’t you mind stepping up
There’re arrival for every departure
Mount festival is leisurely held
There’re longing for every time we love
Border land‘s nature is vast and wide
Wanders through land of epics
Calls a-thousand-year floating cloud
Cunninghamia in a cold night at the post
Stays up with this nature!
[1] When people of Mong hang white dress on fences, people of Thai tie leaves and hang in front of the house, that’s a signal for the family having something going on and currently not available for guests.
[2] A type of basket used to carry food, a farming tool specialized for women to lean the straps on the forehead and carry on the back
[3] Translator note: i-t class is a term for classes opened to solve illiteracy. Teaching people the basic alphabet. Occurred during the period after the Vietnamese revolution against the French in 1945.
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